


Both Sides Now

by orphan_account



Series: Sherstrade Domesticity [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Cute, Domesticity, Fluff, Gentle, Greg calls him Sunshine, Grounding, Love, M/M, Nesting, Sweet, True Love, Vignette, familiarity, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9609230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lestrade's job is often able to deliver shocking images that are hard to clear from the mind. Some officers drink, some smoke weed - Greg goes home to Sherlock.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics/quote taken from Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now'

**'Tears, and fears, and feeling proud. To say 'I love you' right out loud. Dreams, and schemes, and circus crowds  
I've looked at life that way...  
...it's life's illusions that I recall  
I really don't know life at all.' **

'Quiet in here,' Greg announced from his position at the doorway into the bedroom. He leaned on the frame and folded his left ankle across his right. He dug his hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans and offered a comfortable smile when Sherlock raised his head and looked at him. For over an hour, the young man had been sitting on the bed, surrounded by documents, scraps of paper and books, with his legs crossed and a neat pair of reading glasses on his nose. Greg had seen Sherlock wear his glasses before, once or twice, but something about the pyjamas, the dishevelled curls, and the studious look on his face made him look alluring in a comfortable 'welcome home' way. 'How about a break?' he proposed as Sherlock's long, left index finger pushed his specs up his nose. 

Sherlock shook his head and his fly-away curls bounced. 'It's wrecking my mind, I need to get it done.' 

'You let Mycroft boss you around too much, Kid. One day you'll turn around and say no and he won't know what hit him.' Greg drew his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms over his chest. Saturday's off were not guaranteed for the DI and so, when they did occur, it bothered him that Sherlock's mind was everywhere else but with him when they finally had time to spend together for whatever they wanted. Sherlock shrugged his shoulders and pushed his arms back through the papers around him and rested his weight against his palms behind him, stretching out his torso. Greg liked the image. 'Not even half an hour off? ...in all honesty, I'm straining here...' he naval-gazed and Sherlock let out a wild laugh. 

‘Tempting offer,’ Sherlock smiled softly. He reached up with his right hand and drew his glasses from his face. He lay them on the open pages of the textbook before him and awkwardly drew himself into a ball to turn on his bottom and bodily leap from the bed without losing all of his paperwork. He hopped down onto the carpeted floor and slipped his feet into the slippers that he had lobbed down there over an hour before. He moved slowly around the bed and met Greg at the doorway. He didn’t need to arch at all, and easily moved close to kiss him softly, locking his arms around the older man’s neck by lacing his fingers behind his head. Greg’s hands immediately went to Sherlock’s waist, his hands taking a slim hip each. They kissed quietly, eyes closed and bodies still, enjoying the familiarity of one another, before Sherlock pulled his head back slowly and graced his tongue across his lips. ‘I need to go, and then I want a cigarette…’ 

‘So sex with me is off the table?’ Greg laughed lightly, his hands remaining around Sherlock’s body. 

Sherlock tilted his head, ‘Well, it’s definitely off the bed because if I lose where I am in that toxin book, I’ll twist your testicles off. But the table…’ he smirked and pushed his face toward Greg’s, stealing a sweet, tight-lipped peck. ‘Let me out,’ he nodded over Greg’s shoulder toward the bathroom door. ‘Make me a coffee?’ 

Greg released Sherlock and let him past, slapping his left buttock as he slipped into the hallway and along to the bathroom. ‘Anything else, your majesty?’ He called as Sherlock closed the bathroom door. When Sherlock emerged from the bathroom, drying his still-damp hands down the seat of his pyjamas, he found Greg at the breakfast bar, talking seriously into his phone, with the kettle just clicking off the boil behind him. Sherlock walked slowly to the bar and braced it with his hands, frowning at Greg’s serious expression and deep, professional voice. ‘...of course, Donovan. Take Rivers. I’ll be an hour, tops. I’ll meet you all there. Right…’ 

Sherlock drew down his lips and shook his head as Greg hung up the phone, ‘What’s going on?’ 

Greg let out a sigh that deflated his entire body. ‘Body found in Brixton. Woman, head caved in…’ he said as he pushed his phone into his back pocket. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ 

Sherlock nodded his head, ‘Don’t be sorry, it’s okay. Did you want me to come?’ 

Greg shook his head, ‘No - stay here, relax, I’ll call you if I need your help, otherwise just stay.’ He reached over the back and cupped Sherlock’s left cheek in his right palm. ‘I put the coffee in the press, and the kettle’s done…’ he said, bringing down his hand. 

‘I can make my coffee,’ Sherlock smirked. ‘Go on, go - I’ll miss you til you’re back.’ Greg gave Sherlock a weird frown, a sad sort of smile that still made his eyebrows crinkle together in the middle, as though he didn’t know how to take the man’s comment. 

 

Greg returned to the flat shortly before two am. The place was in darkness, but for three spot lights that shone beneath the cabinets in the kitchen, and the television was on standby, it’s red indication light glowing off of the high-gloss black table it sat on. Sherlock’s sleeping form was on the sofa, laid out on his tummy with his arms beneath the scatter cushion that also pillowed his head against the left-side armrest. His long legs were stretched out and his ankles were crossed, hanging over the right armrest. His loose pyjama bottoms were baggy around his rounded bottom and the grey-blue pyjama t-shirt was wrinkled and rising up his back, exposing his right hip and one of the small dimples in his back. Greg stood in quiet appreciation at the doorway, drinking in the sight before him with passion and that warm feeling of home swimming around his abdomen. Sherlock moved in his slumber and groaned a little before sighing without waking, his lips smacked and he whispered something Greg couldn’t quite catch. 

He was cold, damp, as mentally exhausted as he was physically. He knew others on the force who would go home after witnessing what they had and drink themselves into the numbness of sleep; he knew others who would light a joint and chemically kill their worries. He considered he was lucky - he got to come home, after standing at the very edge of somebody else’s horrific death, and see the very reason he had to live. Inside his modest two-bedroom flat, with its seventies-esque interior and it’s faint cigarette smoke smell, there was a mingle of the smell of Sherlock’s bodily smell - of musk and something softer - and the overwhelming sensation of love, and that trumped everything bad about the way his life often went, personally or professionally. He could take a joint, hell he could pour a pint, but washing his mind free of the necessities of his job was easier done, and delivered a better kick, when he took off his shoes and simply held the man he had met with that very job being the reason. 

He let the hallway door close softly in the jamb and moved as quietly as he could around the sofa. He eased awkwardly down to his knees and crawled the length of the couch until he was hovering beside Sherlock’s sleeping face. He sat back on his legs and lowered his head. He carefully placed his left hand in the small of Sherlock’s back and gently began to run it in soothing circles as he whispered the young man’s name. “Sher...lock…” 

After three, whispered calls, Sherlock seemed to register the touch on his back and the words close to his ears. He grumbled low in his throat and reluctantly dragged his blue eyes open, fluttering his lashes as he fought to keep his lids up. He hummed and smiled sleepily as his eyes unfogged and he could see Greg crouched before him, smiling. ‘Hi…’ he croaked. 

‘Hi, you,’ Greg returned, still whispering. 

Sherlock whimpered a little when Greg’s hand stilled on his back, ‘Hey,’ his voice scratched, ‘...more…’ 

Greg obliged, smiling lovingly. ‘It’s almost two - sorry it’s so late.’ 

Sherlock shuffled his head on the couch pillow and licked his lips lazily. ‘That’s okay,’ he said, and his jaw locked down, stretching his entire face as he yawned. He clamped his mouth shut again and sniffled in through his nose, his eyes lulling a little, comforted by the movements of Greg’s warm hand. ‘Was it bad?’

‘Suicide, we think, jumped from the roof of a neighbour’s house by all accounts.’ Greg spoke quietly, wistfully, and he offered a sad smile when Sherlock looked at him with obvious shock, despite his sleepy expression. ‘Mental health…, we’ll be processing it over the next couple of days.’ 

‘That’s sad,’ Sherlock said quietly, closing his eyes again. 

‘You never know what’s going on in somebody else’s head, that’s the sad thing,’ Greg said, awfully philosophical for the late hour. He stopped his circling hand and patted Sherlock’s back lightly, ‘Come on, let’s get into bed.’ 

Sherlock gave a languid nod and turned his face into the couch pillow, groaning into it before he summoned up the sleepy strength to engage all of his bodily muscles and push himself up to sit on the sofa. He got weakly to his feet and stretched his arms above his head, delighting in the clicks and cracks his spine gave at the welcomed twists and turns of his muscles and bones. Greg took Sherlock by the hand and walked with him without speaking again, guiding him through their one-floor home to the bedroom out in the hallway. They fell quietly into bed, immediately cuddling close. The sheets were cool but warmed in no time with their combined heat. Greg delighted in the weight of Sherlock, curled tightly against his side with his head on his chest and his arm thrown across his waist, and held him lovingly with both arms, burying his nose in the young man’s curls to inhale that soft scent of where his heart belonged. ‘Night, Sunshine…’


End file.
